Macbeth - Reviews - Plays International

Last Update: 28 December 2002

There is a sudden crack of lightning,
and the audience shrieks. Soon after, Sean Bean's Macbeth slams
a traitor's severed head on a jagged shard of wood, kicking off
a Macbeth that is tense, fast and vicious - it might be Lynda
la Plante's Macbeth. Edward Hall's new production is certainly
more successful than the last West End attempt with Rufus Sewell.

It is brusque (though he adds a child's
nightmare, a grim coronation to the cut text) with startling touches.
The trim witches dress Macbeth, as if he is in some way their
creature, and they all look just like Samantha Bond's Lady Macbeth,
with tumbling auburn hair and elegant slips. Holding hands, they
wander over the stage between early scenes, but later disappear.

The production is full of such pungent
but unresolved images that migrate from scene to scene. Julian
Glover, for example, follows his perplexed, avuncular King Duncan
with the disreputable porter, oddly slipping back into kingly
accents for "I pray you, remember the porter."

A muscular set by Michael Pavelka confines
the play within heavy structures of blackened steel. Pavelka is
Hall's regular designer, and their butch productions (Henry V
and Julius Caesar for the RSC, or Rose Rage, an abattoir distillation
of the Henry VI plays) nonetheless probe the vulnerabilities of
armoured masculinity or rampant nationalism.

Sean Bean proves excellent casting, a
strong-jawed lion on the battlefield in a battered leather coat
and fraying black mesh. But he stumbles, halts, quakes: Bean's
Macbeth sets out to quash his own juddering terrors, and all but
stifles himself. This Macbeth truly doubts whether "vaulting
ambition" is motive enough for regicide, though his ardour
is undoubted; he takes an involuntary step forward as the king
announces his heir, and can't wait to leave to conceal his disappointment.
But he is also so scared; he has a spectacularly hysterical fit
at the banquet - Banquo's unusually corporeal ghost bears down
on him, even assays a headbutt - and wakes, bare-chested and huddled
on the floor after a nightmare vision of the witches. A Geordie
amid all the suits, he remains an outsider (and the accent is
perfect for the play's clotted imagery.)

Samantha Bond highlights Lady Macbeth's
blinkered softness. Bed is central to the letter scene, and to
their relationship - Bond and Bean make a very horny couple, and
you smile just to see them. Even when she pushes Bean too hard,
and he flares up, there's an astonishing crackle between them.
They are both generous in soliloquy, basking in the present tense.
Bond doesn't seem to notice consequences, Bean wants to buy into
her reality.

Hall emphasises the dynamic of a vertiginous
play. Before long, Bond is pacing aimlessly through the castle,
flinching from her husband's touch: you can't believe they've
reached this alienation so rapidly. After the banquet, Bean says,
"You're but young in deed," and an appalled Bond runs
off the stage. As the relationship with his wife withers, Macbeth
entwines with the lookalike witches, who writhe from his bed for
snogs and prophecy, and stifles his former shaking self until
it seems horribly plausible that he has "forgot the taste
of fears." Like him, Lady M becomes estranged from herself,
sleepwalking with hair chopped about, tear-stained and crouching,
until she no longer resembles her own witchy doppelgangers.

The production includes some excellent
supporting performances: Barnaby Kay's Banquo, his open face clouding
with suspicion; Adrian Schiller fantastically cold and pale as
Duncan's weirdy son; willowy Mark Bazeley and Claire Swinburne
as the Macduffs.

Hall also gives good gore - someone on
the technical team has worked on the stickiness that makes palpable
the tragedy's crimson imagery. When Bean distractedly puts bloody
hands to his hair, or a murderer brandishes evidence of his crimes,
it seems no mere stage effect, so that by the time Lady Macbeth
imagines the gummy stuff on her hands we know how she feels.

Only Schiller's price is bloodless in
this production, and he takes charge in the closing moments -
arresting his own supporters, throwing a chilly gaze on Macduff.
It makes a sobering end to an evening staged as a dark and bloody
thriller.